Ukraine Nuclear Power Plants 'Dangerously' Without Power as Towers Feeding Energy to Crimea Blown Up

November 25, 2015RT News & Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com

A senior Ukrainian energy official has revealed that an attack on transmission towers that cut off electricity from Ukraine to Crimea also created an emergency situation at nuclear power plants. The apparent act of sabotage directed against Crimea forced an emergency power unloading at several nuclear power plants inside Ukraine, which can be extremely dangerous. Now repairs are being blocked by Ukraine government officials.

Ukraine Nuclear Power Plants 'Dangerously' Without Power as Towers Feeding Energy to Crimea Blown Up RT News

(November 23, 2015) -- In an eerie reminder of a possible nuclear catastrophe, a senior Ukrainian energy official revealed that the attack on transmission towers that cut off the delivery of electricity from Ukraine to Crimea also created an emergency situation at nuclear power plants.

The apparent act of sabotage in Ukraine's Kherson region forced an emergency power unloading at several Ukrainian nuclear power plants, which can be extremely dangerous, according to the first deputy director of Ukraine's energy company Ukrenergo, Yuriy Katich.

Russia's Crimea was forced to switch to autonomous reserve power after transmission towers in the adjacent Ukrainian region were blown up, causinPrivacyg a blackout. Meanwhile, the repairs were delayed by Right Sector and Crimean Tatar "activists" attempting to block crews from getting to the scene. None of the groups have accepted responsibility.

"All of these events have led to an additional emergency shutdown of the electrical network of two units at thermal power plants – the Dnieper and Uglegorskaya – and the emergency unloading by 500 MW of nuclear power plants in Ukraine.

This includes Zaporozhskaya NPP and the South Ukrainian NPP. I want to stress that such emergency unloading of a nuclear plant – it is very dangerous," 112. Ukraine online portal quoted Katich as saying.

Earlier Katich said that due to the damage to the electricity towers, there is a risk that 50 percent of Kherson and Nikolaev regions could also be left without power.

He added that repairs are likely take up to three or four days, under the condition that the crew gets access to the site.

So far, local media has reported that the so-called "activists," including Right Sector militants, said they would let the repairs to be done only if they won't be reconnecting "occupied" Crimea to the Ukrainian grid.

Crimea's chief prosecutor, Natalia Poklonskaya, has called the blowing up of the transmission towers sabotage, which "has created a threat to lives and wellbeing of some 2 million people of various nationalities," while a regional authority suggested qualifying it as "an act of terror."

Late Saturday, Crimean authorities rushed to connect hospitals and other vital infrastructure to reserve power stations and generators after the four main transmission lines from Ukraine were cut off due to the collapse of four electricity towers.

The Crimean Emergencies Ministry has declared a state of emergency due to the complete power outage. Nearly 1.9 million people were left partly or fully without electricity.

Important public facilities and infrastructure have been wired up to reserve sources of energy.

Right now, all major Crimean cities are working on reserve energy supplies. However, due to a lack of power supplies, scheduled electricity and water outages have been introduced.

(November 23, 2015) -- Weekend sabotage of the power lines leading from Ukraine into the Crimean Peninsula is only expected to take 3-4 days to repair, according to engineers familiar with the situation, but that is only once they are able to get access to the site of the pylons destroyed in Ukrainian Kherson.

The pylons were blown up by some as-yet-unknown faction, and Ukrainian ultra nationalists are out in force, preventing repair crews from reaching the site to try to effect repairs. This means the peninsula will be without electricity for the foreseeable future.

After its accession into the Russian Federation last year, Russia foresaw the danger of having Crimea dependent on Ukraine for electricity, and has been in the process of laying underwater cables from the Russian mainland. Those cables, however, won't be ready to power the peninsula until 2020 by most estimates.

To make matters worse for the Crimeans, Ukrainian Premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk imposed a "temporary ban" on all cargo entering the peninsula by land. This effectively forces Crimea to rely purely on shipments by sea for basic goods.

Russian officials have blasted the attack on Crimea's power supply as "terrorism," and say they believe the nationalist groups blocking the repairs are likely the ones who blew up the pylons in the first place.

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